Report on Shriners Raises Question of Wrongdoing

Friday

Jul 25, 2008 at 3:34 AM

The findings of an investigative committee suggest that questionable financial dealings identified at local Shrine temples may also plague the national organization.

The findings of an investigative committee established by the joint boards of the Shriners of North America fraternal organization and the Shriners Hospitals for Children offer a glimpse into the inner workings of what is the nation’s wealthiest charity and suggest that questionable financial dealings identified at local Shrine temples may also plague the national organization.

The committee found that the chairman of the Shriners Hospitals Board of Trustees, Ralph Semb, sought to dismiss a fund-raising executive who had refused to hire a direct-mail company Mr. Semb and another board member tried to steer him to.

In its 23-page internal report, the committee found that Mr. Semb and the other board member, Gene Bracewell, who is also the imperial treasurer of the fraternal organization, had violated the organizations’ conflict of interest policy as well as their ethics code and recommended that they be “reprimanded.”

The board, however, decided against taking any punitive action against the men, who deny any wrongdoing.

The report also said that a longtime financial executive of the hospitals, which control an $8 billion endowment, made accusations that there were various financial improprieties in the organization, including the failure of Shrine leaders to report certain benefits they received as income and knowingly filing incorrect tax forms for the hospitals.

But the investigative committee, made up of three former senior elected Shrine officials, was disbanded by the board in June before it was able to finish its inquiry into those accusations, according to John C. Nobles, a member of the committee.

Michael C. Andrews, executive vice president of the fraternal organization, wrote in an e-mail message that the boards had conducted further investigations of their own. “However,” Mr. Andrews said, “nothing new was brought to light.”

Shriners have stepped forward in recent years to complain about improprieties at some of the 191 local temples affiliated with the Shrine, including the commingling of charitable and noncharitable assets and the disappearance of money raised for the hospitals.

The committee report brings to light problems with the national organization, which runs a network of 22 hospitals that provide free orthopedic and burn care to needy children.

Dr. Bernard J. Lemieux, who headed the joint boards at the time the investigative panel was formed, defended the boards’ decision not to punish Mr. Semb and Mr. Bracewell, saying in an e-mail message that the boards had concluded no reprimand “was warranted or necessary.”

Mr. Semb was re-elected chairman of the board of the hospitals in June at the annual Shrine convention in St. Louis.

Dr. Lemieux said the boards had adopted the other recommendations the investigative committee made in an interim report, including a review of the reimbursement policy, and created a confidential way to report suspected policy violations and other wrongdoing.

Mr. Andrews said many of those actions had been under way when the committee made its recommendations.

“Our organization, of its own volition, commenced many of the actions that ultimately were recommended by the special committee,” he wrote. The committee found that Mr. Semb had unilaterally tried to fire the fund-raising executive, Edgar McGonigal, after he declined to hire a direct-mail company that appeared to have ties to a company owned by the son of a close friend of Mr. Bracewell.

Most of the committee’s report relates to the dismissal and rehiring of Mr. McGonigal, who said he did not hire the direct-mail company favored by Mr. Semb and Mr. Bracewell because the company appeared to have ties with Vantage Financial Services, which had performed poorly for the Shriners in the past.

The Shriners employed Vantage to handle fund-raising for the hospitals from 1999 through 2003. Out of $46.2 million raised by Vantage, the Shrine received only $2.5 million, according to the report.

Early this year, the committee was asked to expand its investigation to look into the accusations by a longtime financial executive, Willard Fawcett, who during an exit interview said there had been wide financial improprieties, including inaccurate information on a 2006 tax form, known as a 990.

The three panel members, Mahlon W. Hessey, Mr. Nobles and Robert N. Turnipseed, wrote in their report that these accusations required a “comprehensive continuing investigation.” But the boards of the Shrine and its hospitals, which share members, voted to disband the panel before it had finished its investigation of Mr. Fawcett’s accusations.

When Mr. Hessey tried to present the committee’s findings at the annual Shrine meeting in St. Louis in June, he was booed and heckled off the stage. He warned that Shriners should expect to hear from the attorney general’s office or the Internal Revenue Service, said C. Douglas Mayes, a Shriner who attended the meeting.

The heckling of Mr. Hessey was not surprising, according to some Shriners. Three of the five Shriners initially appointed to the investigative committee declined to serve on it, said the report, because they might have feared “retaliation.”

Reached during a trip to Manila, Mr. Semb and Mr. Bracewell said they had not tried in any way to influence the choice of a direct-mail vendor. “Absolutely not,” Mr. Semb wrote in an e-mail message.

Mr. Fawcett’s concerns could not be determined. He referred calls to his lawyer, Ryan Barack. Mr. Barack left a message in response to one phone call to his office but did not return subsequent calls.

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